Configure Salesforce tasks or events

Gong activities are exported to Salesforce as either tasks or events which are created once, immediately after the activity is processed in Gong. Tasks for emails may take a little longer as they are created in bulk and depend on the available Salesforce resources.

Tasks and events are associated with an existing Account, Contact, Lead, or Opportunity as identified by Gong.

Default task/event status

Most tasks/events are created with a status of Completed as Gong activities are exported after they have already occurred. This includes emails, telephony calls, conference calls and Engage activities depending on what you choose to export to Salesforce.

Meeting invite status

Salesforce activities (task or event) for meeting invites have a status of In Progress as they are exported before the meeting takes place. If past meeting invites are exported, they are also assigned the In Progress status.

After the meeting takes place, the task/event is updated as follows:

• Recorded meetings: The recording of the meeting is added to the corresponding meeting invite task/event, and the status is changed to Completed.

• Non recorded meetings: The status remains In Progress and is not closed automatically. No additional details of the meeting are exported.

• Canceled meetings: The title of the task/event is updated with Meeting Canceled. The status remains In Progress.

• Deleted meetings: Deleted from the CRM.

See Values assigned to task fields for more details.

Task/event configurations

Gong activities can be associated with multiple CRM entities, for example in activities where there are multiple participants who could be from different accounts. When exporting, choose between:

• Creating a single Salesforce task/event: Details of all CRM entities involved in the activity displayed in one task. For example, if there are 5 contacts, those contacts are listed in the participants field.
  Here is an example of a single task created for an email with three contacts. The primary contact is in the Name field and the other contacts are added to the Gong participants custom field.

  

• Create several Salesforce tasks/events: A task/event is created for each entity in the activity. For example, if there are 4 contacts on a call, 4 tasks/events will be created for the call. In addition, more tasks will be created for the accounts and opportunities the call is associated with.
  Here is an example of two tasks created for the same email, one for the contact and one for the opportunity.

  

The decision of whether to create single or multiple Salesforce activities depends on how you use data in Salesforce. For example, if you want to see which reps are on which emails or calls, this will be easier if you create multiple activities in Salesforce. If you want data on how many activities are occurring, you will need to create single Salesforce activities.

Creating one task per activity

Single Salesforce activities requires grouping data together. For example, the name field holds one contact. If a Gong activity includes many contacts, we choose one contact to display in the name field and add the rest to a custom field. If an activity is associated with several opportunities, we select one opportunity and list the others in a custom field.

Managing duplicate contacts/leads

When there are several CRM contacts or leads that could correspond with a single Gong activity participant we choose the contact with the most recent Due date of the contact or lead’s closed tasks/events. If the due date of all potential contacts is empty, we randomly assign a contact to the activity.

Populating the task/event fields

Fields for single tasks/events are populated as follows:

• Name: We select the participant based on the following:

  1. CRM contact: we look for the CRM contact that corresponds to each participant in the Gong activity.

  2. CRM lead: if there are no contacts, we look for CRM leads. As leads aren’t associated with accounts in the CRM, we will not be able to associate the task/event with an account or opportunity and the Related to field will be empty.

  3. Domain: if there are no CRM leads we look to see if there is an account with the same domain as any of the participants, and we associate the Salesforce activity with that account. In this case, the Name field is empty.

• Related to: This is either an opportunity or an account based on the following criteria:

  1. Opportunity: if we identify one opportunity associated with the Gong activity, the Related to field is populated with the opportunity.

  2. Account: If there are no opportunities, or there are multiple opportunities that can be associated with the activity, the Related to field is populated with the account of the participant in the Name field.

Additional participants, accounts, and opportunity details are displayed in custom fields that should be defined in the task/event:

• Gong_Participants__c: to display the list of participants

  Note:

  The maximum length of this field is 255 characters. If the list of participants exceeds this, see the activity in Gong for the full participant list

• Gong_Associated_Accounts__c: to display the list of associated accounts

• Gong_Associated_Opportunities__c: to display the list of associated opportunities

See Setting up Salesforce custom fields for more details.

Note

If the custom fields relevant for creating one task/event for each activity are not defined in Salesforce, a single task/event is generated but the associated participant, account, and opportunity details will not be available.

Creating several Salesforce activities for calls

A separate task/event is created for each of the relevant contacts, leads, accounts and opportunities identified by Gong.

For example, if a meeting was held for Acme Robotics about a Renewal opportunity with Marcus Rashford and Jack Grealish from Acme Robotics, then separate Salesforce activities will be created for the Acme Robotics Account, Renewal Opportunity, and Marcus and Jack's Contacts records.

In the Acme Robotics record, you’ll see 2 tasks; one for Marcus, and one for Jack. In the Renewal Opportunity, you will also see 2 tasks, one for each contact.

Creating several tasks for emails

Multiple tasks for emails are created as follows:

1. The email sender and receiver are either Salesforce users or contacts

2. For outbound emails: the Salesforce contact or user are in the To field and not in the CC field of the email

   For inbound emails: the Salesforce contact or user are in either the To or the CC field of the email

3. Separate tasks are created for each Salesforce user and contact and for each opportunity the email is associated with

4. A separate task may be created for up to five email recipients. If an email has more than five recipients, the recipient names are added to the task comments but no task is generated for them.

5. For inbound emails, tasks are created for Salesforce users that are either the opportunity owner if the status of the opportunity is open, or the account manager.

Example of tasks created from outbound emails

• From: John@acme

• To: Graham@prospectCompany, Julie@prospectCompany

• Associated opportunities: Basic package, Advanced package

In this case, four tasks are created for John.

• Task 1: User: John@acme, Contact: Graham@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Basic package, call-object-identifier - az173489

• Task 2: User: John@acme, Contact: Julie@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Basic package, call-object-identifier - az173489

• Task 3: User: John@acme, Contact: Graham@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Advanced package, call-object-identifier - az173489

• Task 4: User: John@acme, Contact: Julie@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Advanced package, call-object-identifier - az173489

Example of tasks created from inbound emails

• To: John@acme, Amy@acme

• From: Graham@prospectCompany, Julie@prospectCompany

• Associated opportunities: Basic package, Advanced package

In this case two tasks are created as Amy is not the account manager or the opportunity owner.

• Task 1: User: John@acme, Contact: Graham@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Basic package, call-object-identifier - ad8959654

• Task 2: User: John@acme, Contact: Graham@prospectCompany, Opportunity: Advanced package, call-object-identifier - ad8959654

Configuring the type for a Salesforce activity

Salesforce activities include a type field which you can customize. This lets you create reports in Salesforce based on the different types of Gong activities. The default types set by Salesforce are:

• Call

• Meeting

• Other

In order to be able to set a task type for emails, Engage to-dos and LinkedIn messages, we recommend creating the following types for Salesforce tasks:

• Email: mapped automatically if the task type is already defined in Salesforce. You can change this if needed.

• To-Do

• LinkedIn message

Once you have configured the types, set the relevant task type for each activity in the Salesforce task settings section. Existing tasks are not updated with the relevant task type. To update your existing tasks with the new task type, see Updating existing tasks with a task type.

The following table shows the default values for the task type and task subtype if you do not set a task type for the activity:

Ensure exported data is displayed in the task

In order to display all relevant data in the task, you need to define additional fields in the task object and add them to the task layout in Salesforce. This can be done automatically by Gong if you install the Gong for Salesforce app, or you can set the fields up manually in Salesforce.

In the Custom fields section of the page, select whether you want automatic or manual setup for the custom fields. You can also install Gong for Salesforce if you have not done so.

A list of features and the custom fields for those features are listed with a status of whether they are defined in Salesforce or not. See Setting up Salesforce custom fields for details of how to define the fields in Salesforce.

Data exported to Salesforce tasks or events

Gong creates task/event records with the following details:

The call-object-Identifier

The email has an activity ID which is stored in the Call Object Identifier displayed in the task. Use this ID to create reports or search for all activities based on a specific email.